Analects 15.18: 衛靈公 (Wei Ling Gong)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 15 tests exemplary conduct under pressure: hunger, going unrecognized, bad government, and the pull of clever speech. Its sayings ask how learning becomes judgment, how humaneness directs action, and how ritual gives that action form. The portraits of unwavering straightness and timely withdrawal leave room for different responses to public disorder. Praise must answer to examination, and responsibility repeatedly returns to oneself. Short assurances sit beside difficult tensions about reputation and the cost of humaneness. The book closes with the Master guiding a visitor through a room, giving the call for consideration a precise human setting.
Analects 15.18
子曰、君子病無能焉、不病人之不己知也。
The Master said, “An exemplary person worries about lacking ability; they do not worry that others do not recognize them.”
Commentary
ethics What deserves concern The wording about others failing to recognize oneself recalls 1.16’s concern with recognition and understanding others. Here the proper object of concern is 無能, lacking ability. 病, literally illness or distress, appeared as actual weakness among the hungry followers at the opening; it now names a troubling deficiency. The shift redirects attention toward what one can cultivate.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high